Today I would like to share a word about the law as I comment on Romans 3:19-20.
I recently had an unpleasant encounter with a police officer. Not because I was unjustly accused but for the opposite. I actually was guilty . . . guilty as sin. Let me explain:
I was in an unfamiliar neighborhood of a town in a nearby county on my way to a meeting with some colleagues in ministry. I was actually early, so I wasn’t in a hurry, but I was searching the house numbers along the road for the church where the meeting was being held. I topped a hill and on the other side was a crossroads with a stop sign - facing me!
I quickly stepped on my brakes, but it was clear that I was not going to stop on time, even though I was not driving very fast. I looked both ways and while I did see a car to my right, it was probably a quarter mile away, so I went on through the intersection. No one was in any danger, so everything was fine, right? Well, not so much.
I can recognize a police car a mile away, so it was not hard for me to note that the one car in sight as I blew through the stop sign was a police car. And I knew he saw me.
Once on the other side of the intersection I idled along until the police officer turned right to follow me and hit his blue lights. License, insurance card, and an admission of guilt on my part followed, and ten minutes later I drove off with a traffic citation in hand. Sadly, the church I was looking for was just a couple of blocks up the road.
I had broken the law, but there were some mitigating circumstances, right?
No one got hurt.
I wasn’t speeding or talking on my cell phone (really, I wasn’t).
I didn’t mean to run the stop sign.
I didn’t make the officer chase me,
I even admitted my guilt.
Here’s the thing, however: the law does not care about my excuses. It is very digital, either you comply with it or you don’t. Either you obey it, or you don’t. Either you are blameless or you are guilty.
In Romans 3:19-20, Paul told us that,
“Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.”
The police officer who wrote me the ticket had every right to do so, and he also had the responsibility to do so. Although the law is righteous, the law is also harsh, and that is just the way it is.
The Good News, as in the Gospel, is that God is gracious, and He has provided us salvation from our sins through Jesus Christ our Lord. Paul went on to write in Romans 4:7-8 that,
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”
Although I was chagrined about receiving a traffic ticket (Corbitt men are notoriously proud of our driving skills), my encounter with the law reminded me of a great spiritual lesson. It also reminded me to be ever the more grateful to our God who has saved me from my sin!
Today I want to share a word about practical theology as I comment on Romans 15:23-24.
We often think of Romans as an intensely theological book and it is. If we assume Paul did not write Hebrews, Romans is probably his greatest theological work.
We would be mistaken, however, to ignore the many very practical sections in Romans. For example:
In Romans 8, Paul dealt with suffering.
In Romans 12, Paul discussed our service to God.
In Romans 13, Paul outlined true patriotism and what it meant to be a good neighbor.
In Romans 15 Paul outlined the tasks of missions, church planting, and evangelism.
In Romans 16, Paul recognized faithful co-laborers in the cause of Christ.
So, you can see that Romans is a very practical book, and our focal passage for today provides us a very practical teaching. Indeed, Paul had a very practical reason for writing the church in Rome.
Paul knew that the Church at Rome did not have an apostolic founder. He wanted the Roman believers to have a solid foundation in the faith, but not just so that could boast in their theological astuteness. In fact, Paul told them that one of the primary reasons that he was writing them was so that they could help him go to Spain on missions, which is certainly a practical ministry activity.
In Romans 15:23-24, Paul told the church at Rome,
“But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions, and since I have been longing for many years to visit you, I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to see you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while”
Paul’s reason for writing the Church at Rome needs to inform and guide our own use of theology.
Theology is literally the study of God, and because God is such a fascinating subject, people have in past times have gotten so enthralled with the details of God’s being and actions that they have lost focus and forgotten the purpose for which they try to learn more about Him.
Medieval theologians have rightly been criticized for arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Even if one could discover such a number, how could such knowledge improve anyone’s spiritual condition.
Contrast that with what Jesus said He came to do; to seek and save the lost and to give us abundant life. How immensely practical!
Equally practical was how Paul described the use of Spiritual Gifts in the church in Romans 12:4-8.
“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.”
No doubt, the Book of Romans discusses many deep and intriguing spiritual truths, but those truths have a practical and beneficial application to our personal lives. We will be looking at several of these over the next few weeks.
So, that’s all for now; thanks for watching. I will be back soon with more practical points of theology from Romans.
Today I would like to share a word about isolation as I comment on Matthew 14:23.
My comments today are the third and last in a series of articles about how my military experience as a chaplain has helped me apply Biblical truths to my life as I dealt with stress and difficult times.
When I commented last, I noted how God had taught me not to borrow trouble from tomorrow and to focus on my current situation. Often, fasting from news media, social media, and other stressful stimuli is the best way to manage our stress. We must be careful, however, not to take that to the extreme.
Once, during an exercise at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, I received a radio message that a Soldier attached to us from another unit was distressed and I needed to check on him. When I arrived at his location, I found the young man sitting in the back of an armored vehicle, incommunicative and staring off into space with what we called the “thousand-yard stare.”
My Chaplain Assistant and I ushered him into our vehicle and took him back to his own unit and placed him in the hands of their medics. Later, I learned that after a good night’s sleep the young man was fine, but his experience is instructive for us.
Like Jesus, we do need to separate ourselves from the world from time to time. For example, Matthew 14:23 tells us, “And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.” The revival preacher Vance Havner preached a sermon called, “Come apart before you come apart,” which is excellent advice. We must be careful to avoid a trap as we employ this technique, however. If we are not careful, withdrawal from the world can become an end in itself.
The young Solider at Camp Shelby had withdrawn into himself so much that he has become virtually catatonic. When we withdraw so totally from the world that we fail to engage it at all, then we have taken this too far and we become dysfunctional and emotionally and physically ill.
Jesus did withdraw from the crowds and His Disciples, but only for as long as it took for Him to to recharge His spiritual and emotional batteries. Once He had accomplished this, He reengaged people and continued to pursue His mission of seeking and saving those who were lost.
Jesus did not allow isolation and solitude become His master, but instead He mastered these for His own purposes. We must learn to do the same, because if we withdraw from this world, we cannot go into it and “make disciples of all people.” If we do, we fail ourselves and our God.
Today I am sharing a word about resilience as I comment on Matthew 6:34.
With all of the drama and trauma of the past year, no doubt many of us have experienced a high level of emotional stress which has, at least from time to time, become distress.
We all have dealt with this situation in the best way we could, and that reminds me of some experiences from my past service in the Army.
A Stressful Time:
During the summer of 1981 I went to Fort Bragg, NC for several weeks of advanced officer cadet training and evaluation. The course was designed to put cadets under mental, emotional, physical, and social stress to evaluate if we were able to adapt and to exert leadership under those circumstances.
While I had previously completed the US Army Airborne School, and I had already experienced living in an open-bay barracks before, I found myself having some trouble standing up to the stress I was feeling.
While I was still functional, I was very stressed, and unsure how to handle it. One particular area of trouble was the fact I was not sleeping well because I was thinking about the challenges of the next day.
Peaceful Moments:
Then, one night in my bunk, God brought an idea to my mind. He taught me to not dread tomorrow, but to focus on my current situation. In fact, the very words that He led me to say to myself were, “No matter what they might do to us tomorrow, right now I am O.K. No one is bothering me at the moment, and I need to enjoy this peace while I have it.”
From that moment, my attitude was transformed, and I went on to successfully complete my cadet training, and after graduating from university, I was commissioned as an officer in the Regular Army.
Although the purpose of our cadet training was to produce capable leaders by screening out those who did not meet the challenge, my time at Fort Bragg has another, more spiritual, effect on me. It brought to life a passage of Scripture that I had heard many times but had never before needed to apply to my life:
“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” (Matthew 6:34)
I knew that Scripture, but until I had lived it, it was not real to me. Living that Scripture required that I experience difficulty and stress. Without those I would have known this truth in my head, but not in my heart.
Now, nothing I have said above implies that I have become immune from stress; far from it. I still have to deal with stress, although I am now more concerned about taking care of those for whom I am responsible than I am about myself.
The Key Take-aways:
1. Our world is fallen and imperfect (and stressful) because of mankind’s sin, but God loves us, and He helps us in our infirmities.
2. Things always work better when we do them God’s Way as revealed in His Word.
May God bless us all in 2021 and may we all learn to live empowered by God’s Word and by His Holy Spirit.
People are tired. Pastors are tired. I am tired. 2020 was a dumpster fire of a year; in fact, someone designed a 2020 Christmas tree ornament in the shape of a dumpster fire. I find that most appropriate. We all need a new start.
The last time I felt this tired was ten years ago at the end of my deployment to Iraq as a chaplain in the Alabama Army National Guard. I was not only chaplain for a very busy unit, but I also was pastor of the largest chapel service on Camp Victory in Baghdad.
During the week I burned the candle at both ends and by the time Sunday afternoon arrived I was so tired that all I could do was lie on my bed and close my eyes. I was so tired I could not even sleep, much less read a book, watch a movie on my computer, or listen to music. By supper time, however, I had revived enough to make my way to the dining facility for a good meal, and by Monday I was back up and at it, starting another busy week of ministry.
I am not quite as tired today as I was in Iraq, but the past year has presented us all with stresses and challenges that have made us all tired and we are all looking for some relief in 2021. The good news is that relief is available to us, as the writer of Hebrews reminded us:
There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. (Hebrews 4:9-11)
To be clear, the writer was talking about our rest from relying on works for salvation, and resting in Christ as our Savior, but if we can rest in Him for salvation, can we not also rest in Him for . . . rest?
The Corona virus has negatively impacted many areas of our life, but participation in church worship and other ministries has been impacted more than most in my estimation. What lessons can we draw from our experience of 2020?
Build Spiritual Endurance:
First, and most immediately, we must take every opportunity to build our spiritual endurance. We can do this through private and family devotions, through use of technology and the internet, and, most importantly, through safely gathering as often as possible with our church family for mutual support and encouragement.
Remember the Lessons from Jospeh:
Second, as the Corona virus situation improves, and I am confident it will, we need to remember the lesson of the seven fat years and the seven lean years in the story of Joseph. We need to build our spiritual strength in the easy times, because one thing is for certain, hard times will come again.
Be of Good Cheer:
Finally, we all must remember that our ultimate rest in Christ is yet to come, when we cross over the Jordan into the Eternal Zion of Heaven. Even if the Corona virus continues to bedevil us, God has prepared a place for us with Him for Eternity, so be of good cheer, child of God!
While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
Manger scenes are one of Christianity’s great Christmas traditions. In the days leading up to Christmas, churches, homes, and many public places will be adorned by the figures of Mary and Joseph and the little baby Jesus in a stable, surrounded by barnyard animals, shepherds, and Wise Men who had come from afar. These figures create beautiful tableaus which allege to tell the story of that first Christmas.
Some churches will even host a live nativity scene with people, animals, and a new-born babe. The best of these, in my opinion, include a Gospel presentation, giving people the chance to actually worship “Christ the new-born King” by giving their lives to Him.
Nativity scenes for the home are popular and they are best sellers. One of my personal favorites was acquired during a mission trip to Peru and depicts the Holy Family in traditional Peruvian dress, and instead of donkeys, cows, and sheep, it features llamas.
Yes, nativity scenes are a wonderful staple of Christmas celebrations . . . except that they are all wrong. OK, they are not all wrong . . . just mostly wrong. Before anyone gets angry, let us look at the Bible and see what it says.
No Wise Men:
The first correction we need to make is that we should never include the Wise Men in a manger scene.
Matthew 2:1 tells us that the Magi came to Jerusalem “after Jesus was born in Bethlehem.” Although Mary and Joseph did receive visitors that night, they were the lowly shepherds who had been abiding in the fields, not the Wise Men from the East.
No Stable:
I remember hearing a colleague once criticizing a manger scene as not being Biblical because it depicted a wooden barn instead of a cave. It is true that visitors to the Holy Land are taken to a cave which is said to be the place of Christ’s birth, but if we want to be Biblical, we must realize that neither account of Christ’s birth in Luke nor Matthew mention a stable.
Or animals, either.
We do know from the Biblical record that Jesus was laid in a manger, and so we assume that an animal feeding trough was in a stable, surrounded by animals, but that is only an assumption. The Bible does not say where Jesus was born, it only tells us where He was not born.
The fact that Jesus was laid in a manger does not mean He had to be born in a stable. I can see a situation where, as Jesus was being born, a young boy or girl was sent out to find something to lay the newborn baby in. This well-meaning adolescent grabbed the first crib-like device that was close at hand – the manger used to feed the family’s animals. Regardless, there is no mention of a stable.
In fact, Matthew 2 tells us that the Magi came to Jesus at a house. Yes, this was several days after Jesus was born, but while Matthew and Luke never mention a stable, Matthew does feature a house in the story of the birth of Jesus. This leads me to my next point.
No Innkeeper (and Maybe No Inn, Either):
As they tell the story of the first Christmas, live nativity presentations will often include a scene in which Mary and Joseph are turned away from an inn by a heartless or even evil innkeeper. Please look closely at Luke 2. No innkeeper is mentioned. Did one ever exist?
Proving a negative is always difficult, but we know that Luke was a researcher and that he included many details of the life and ministry of Jesus that are not found in the other Gospels. That is why it is a longer account: he included more details.
From what we know about Luke, can we take the absence of an innkeeper as a fact? No, but we also cannot say there was an innkeeper either, especially if we consider there may not have been an inn.
The NIV translation uses the term “guest room” instead of an inn. Although the ESV uses the traditional “inn” in the text, it allows for the term to be translated as “guest room” in a footnote. With the background of middle eastern hospitality in mind, I think that “guest room” is the proper translation.
So, no inn, and therefore no evil innkeeper. But in saying that, I don’t lose sight of the fact that there was no proper place available for Christ to be born.
No Problem:
As I have recounted the problems that I have noted with traditional depictions of the first Christmas, does this make me some kind of doubter or heretic?
No, not at all. We really do not need to add in stables, animals, or harried innkeepers to realize the humble nature of Christ’s birth.
He was born to a young, officially unwed mother who was traveling to an overcrowded and strange (to her) town because of a government dictate. The birth of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords was only celebrated by lowly (and probably smelly) shepherds, and there was no proper crib for the baby to lie in.
This description of Christ’s birth is more Biblically accurate, and it is totally in line with Philippians 2:5-8 which reads:
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!
No Excuses:
So, is there anything wrong with our traditional depictions of manger scenes?
Well, as long as the Magi are not included there is nothing that we depict in a manger scene that contradicts Scripture. I think we can do better, however.
The thing is, like the notes in a study Bible, or the section titles that are included in many Bibles, we must be sure to note that our nativity scenes are culturally oriented messages that must be accompanied by solid Biblical preaching. Let me explain.
During a class on Bible translation at a missionary training center, an instructor was describing how translators must take into account local culture when producing Bibles in local languages. He told of a tribe where the sacrificial animal was a pig and that this tribe had never seen a sheep. He argued that in a Bible for that tribe John 1:29 should read “Behold the pig of God that takes away the sin of the world.” I disagreed with that idea then, just as I do now.
The idea that Jesus should be called a pig is wrong on many levels, not the least of which is the fact that the Bible called Him a lamb. Bible translations should consider cultural relevance, but frankly, that was taking things too far.
I could see translating “lamb” as “sacrificial animal” or some other descriptive term, but I believe it would have been better to be accurate and it should have been left as “lamb.” The role of the preacher is to interpret the Word and many other passages exist that need a preacher's interpretation.
As Christians, we all need to be one who “correctly handles the Word of Truth.”
We need to distinguish Biblical principles and facts from explanations or sermon illustrations.
We also need to make sure we do not overlay our own culture over the Biblical message in a way that excludes people of other cultures or implies that the Scripture teaches things that it doesn’t.
Paul said that being a teacher of the Bible is a serious business and that teachers are held to a higher standard. We need to do better as we worship Him and propagate the Gospel.
Today I want to comment on what I call "Ground Truths."
In 26 years of Army service, I learned a few life principles
which I call “Ground Truths.” These are practices that I have observed to work
well in my own life and the lives of others. I offer them up freely and you are
free to apply them as the Lord leads!
They include:
Mission First,
People Always!
Lean forward in
your foxhole (that means “take the initiative” for you civilian personnel); if
you aren’t going the extra mile you aren’t really trying.
There is no
right way to do the wrong thing; always do what is right even when no one is
looking.
There is no
such thing as a good surprise in the Army, and bad news does not get better
with age.
More
communication is better than less, so stay in touch!
Showing up is
90% of life; if you’re on time, you’re late!
Never let your ego write a check your competence can’t cash.
Always have a
plan; you can always call an audible if you need to.
Perception is
reality. You are only as good as your last time at bat.
You can only fall
on your sword once; make sure it is worth it.
Tell the truth
in love. It in an inherent part of your job!
You don’t have
to train to be miserable. Miserable comes naturally.
It is easier to
act yourself into feeling better than it is to feel yourself into acting
better.
In terms of
leaders, today’s peacock is tomorrow’s feather duster.
Know your lane
but keep a wide aperture.
Chaplains are missionaries to a warrior tribe. They have to speak the tribe’s language to be effective in their mission.
Put effort and planning into your invocations at ceremonies. This might be the only ministry some of your Soldiers ever get.
“Big boy rules”
mean that you are willing to live with consequences of either success or
failure.
Count Von Zinzendorf
“Preach the Gospel, die, and be forgotten.”
Theodore Geisel
(Dr. Seuss): “Do not cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
If it is
possible, as much as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone . . . But,
if you have to fight, fight like you are the third monkey on the ramp to Noah’s
Ark, and brother, it is starting to rain!
You can never go wrong loving Soldiers and their families.
